Doctor, You Sneak!
by lovelylyusha
Summary: The Doctor decides to be sneaky when he needs to accomplish a goal. Written because I'm afraid of needles :') Oodles of fluff. What could be better?


"Doctor, I don't wanna." She's sitting in the med bay with her hands wrapped tightly around the edges of a gurney, eyeing his hand with a mixture of hate and terror. "I can't."

"You can't if you tell yourself that." He quickly tucks the hand she's looking at behind his back and brushes the other reassuringly down her arm. "Rose, you've stared death in the face countless times and run miles from bildegacks on Ha'Keem and done so many other things that require so much bravery. And I'm proud of you for that, I am. But you can't have used all that bravery up!"

She shakes her head. "S'not," she starts, "s'not that I've got none left, it's…" She wanted to avoid saying it at all costs, but it's not like he didn't know already. "I'm scared."

"Of this?" He shows her the object again and she looks at it like it's going to jump out and bite her at any given moment. "You can't tell me you've never gotten a shot before."

"I have," she says defensively, "when I was a kid, but not all that recently. Didn't need 'em or somethin'. An'… it hurts." She glances up to his face once, but then she's right back to staring at the syringe. "An' that's a big needle, an' that's a lot of… stuff."

He looks amused for a moment, then grows somber. "Rose, you were exposed to pathogens that your body definitely _cannot_ handle." She hates the guilty look in his eyes; he didn't know there'd been an outbreak when they stopped off at Keem to see their famous plateaus and she didn't blame him one bit, but _he_ blamed him enough for the whole of planet Earth. "Either you get this-" he gives her the raised-eyebrows look from behind his specs that he does when he needs her to listen as he raises the syringe again, "-or you spend the rest of your life sprouting tentacles and possibly blind and other things. No human's contracted this before. You need the antiviral, and that's the end of it."

"Can't you put it into a pill or somethin'?" She's desperate and very good at swallowing pills. Much better than she is at getting needles stuck in her arm, anyway.

"It has to enter your bloodstream directly. Stomach acid would kill it." He glances away. "Rose," he says quietly, "I would never force you to do something if it made you this uncomfortable. You know that, don't you?"

She knows he knows the answer to that, but she nods anyway. "But I have to. There's no other way to do this. I'm sorry, I really am. I'm so sorry."

"Can you knock me out for it?" She sits up straighter, confident in her idea. "The laughing gas stuff or whatever it is they give you when they pull a tooth?"

"The chemicals in that would negate the antivirus once it gets in your blood stream." He grimaced apologetically. "I could give you a local anesthetic-"

"It's not pain I'm worried about, Doctor." They both know she's been through worse than a bit of a poke. "It's the… the concept of it all. Things going into things that they're not meant to. It's- it's like-"

"Anything invasive." He gives her the term and she nods vigorously. His hand brushes her hair behind her ear and he fingers her hoop earring. He leans closer, barely resting his forehead against hers. "How'd you get these done, then?"

"Mum did it when I was a year old, or around then." She tosses her head to bring her hair back into place. "No way out of this, then, I guess?" She grimaces, and his expression matches hers as he shakes his head once. "Figures."

"I'm sorry, Rose, I really am." He touches her cheek and then suddenly there's a spark of humor in his eyes. "But tell you what," he says with a sudden brightness, eyes twinkling, "I'll give you a Hello Kitty plaster, then we can go get chips and ride the London Eye."

She wrinkles her nose. "Hello Kitty is for six year olds," she complains, matching his grin with one of her own. "I want the _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles._"

"That's also for six year olds," he teases, "just boys. Also, I don't have them. Tell you what then," he adds, "you can have a plain one and we can have plant and banana smoothies on Saxia III instead. They have fantastic art museums."

She rolls her eyes. "Hello Kitty and chips it is," she agrees with a groan, and as he moves away she notices that the white cartoon cat is already in the crook of her elbow, sporting a little crown and purple frock against a pink background. She stares a moment, then her gaze moves to the empty syringe next to her on the gurney.

She smacks his shoulder. "I hate you."

"Had to get it done somehow." The smug look on his face is beyond infuriating and she jumps to her feet, advancing as he backs slowly away towards the door. "I'm lucky you were gripping the edge so tightly, though. Vein was right there. You made it easy for me."

Rose raises her eyebrows and squares her shoulders. "You're not gonna get me with that trick again," she warns. "Next time this happens I'm gonna keep my eye on you, mister." She prods him in the chest.

"There won't be a next time." For a moment his eyes lose their sparkle and he's back in that place where he blames himself for everything from that time she was almost sacrificed to a sun god to that time she nearly cut her finger off xon her razor, but then he ducks through the door and is thundering down the corridor. "Last one buys chips!" She's close at his heels, though, and when she catches up (she knows he's letting her, though) their fingers are stuck together like glue.

"Oi, you said you were takin' me out!" She bumps her shoulder into his with the intention of shoving him into the wall. "You owe me for bein' sneaky about stickin' a bottle of stuff in my arm!"

He shoves her right back and she bursts into giggles as they reach the console room and he starts pressing buttons and turning dials, all the while holding her hand in his. "I'll admit to that. But I want the window seat on the Eye."

She doesn't bother pointing out that a) the carts are made of windows and b) the seats are more like floor-seats, thanks to the glass panel in the center of the cars on top of which sat wooden benches. Instead, she shakes the hand he's holding. "Deal."

"Brilliant." He flips a final switch, and off they go into time and space. "Allons-y!"


End file.
